Just installed RTC2200 - need advice please

[terrythecat]

Hi
I've just received the RTC2200 I ordered from the states last week and installed
it between the Toshiba HD-XE1 and Barco 808s and have a little problem which
I hope someone would be able to help with. On standard DVD playback there is a mauve line which scrolls up continuously quite slowly and red, green and blue
dashes at the top of the screen which fade and then return and white dashes
which remain constantly. On HD there are numerous mauve lines about 10 inches apart which scroll up like crazy and white dashes at the top of the screen....no RGB dashes at top though. Should I be tweaking the 4 screws at back of the RTC2200....there are no instructions with the transcoder and I don't
want to fiddle until I know what i'm fiddling with. Also,the Toshiba is restricting
standard DVD playback to 576p....is this a firmware issue - I'm not sure what
the machine has come with. Cheers.

 

[audimushroom]

Hi
Also,the Toshiba is restricting
standard DVD playback to 576p....is this a firmware issue - I'm not sure what
the machine has come with. Cheers.

Although the Toshiba is an upscaling DVD player it will only upscale through HDMI and not through component. This is not unique to the Toshiba it is the same for all upscaling DVD players and is due to a restriction imposed by the DVD Forum, alas there is no fix for this one...

 

[terrythecat]

That's a bummer. I was sure it was only 1080p that was restricted to HDMI and
reading Tosh's own advertising material gives the impression that up to 720p and 1080i is

available through component. I'm looking at the review of the XE1 in HCC and in
the specifications Re: Component it definately states ' hi-def ' output....I took that to mean greater than 576p. I've just watched a concert DVD in 576p and
I'm sure the picture was better than that from my HTPC set to 720p, so it seems to be better in that respect.... but 720p would be better still.
( maybe 1080p into a digital PJ isn't such a bad thing after all ).

 

[Tom.W]

Heres a link to the manual . You will find it here ...

http://crescendo-systems.com/rev_transcoder.html

As for upscaling SD disks you can burn a copy with the program Any DVD on a dual layer DVD R and it will playback at 1080i as the program removes copy protection .

 

[terrythecat]

Thanks Tom, I have printed off the user manual and taken the lid off the RTC2200 and am trying to understand what needs to be done to change the unit to manual. Annoyingly, I will have to re-arrange things in order to place the unit in front of the screen so I can see what changes are being made.

 

[Tom.W]

Are you using port 3 or port 5 ? does tha banding occur in the active picture area or will blanking get rid of them . Mine worked fine out of the box with a barco Data 808 and also my 1209s using input 5 . Kim is a great guy and will be happy to help you if you have a problem . I was lucky enough to be one of his very first testers .

 

[Alaric]

Hi there,

I found sync/rolling issues with my BG808s and port3. Port5 worked fine though.

cya,
Lee

 

[terrythecat]

Hi
There are 5bnc into port 4/5. I changed the transcoder to manual and things were much worse. The picture was way off screen to the left and the scrolling lines more active. Turning the screws for H-delay, H-width and V-width could not correct things, the V-width had no effect whatsoever (incidentally, I have no idea what these terms mean). I changed the unit back to auto and the scrolling lines were no more. Odd. The RGB dashes at the top of the screen on sDVD were now gone also. However, the white dashes at the top of the screen (off the picture) were still present, being a different pattern for HD and sDVD and the picture was off the screen both sides. Could this be a barco issue?
We watched the HD movie 300 last night set to 720p (it's the only one I have at present) and was not particularly impressed with the pq, there seemed to be a 'shimmering' quality to it. My son termed it 'flickering'. Today, I played the R1 standard side of the disc in the HTPC and to me it looked no worse than the HD. I was expecting to be blown away by HD but so far am questioning my purchasing decisions. I expected to plug the transcoder in line and everything would be hunky dory. Wish I had a spare £3 1/2K for a 1080p pj!

 

[Tipper]

Although the Toshiba is an upscaling DVD player it will only upscale through HDMI and not through component.

This is not true. Only if the ICT Flag is set on the disc will the player downrez the analog outputs. To the best of my knowledge, no current HD disc has its ICT Flag set and, according to scuttlebutt, won't for a few years, if ever. My opinion is that it will never be set except, perhaps, in isolated cases, simply because no one seems to want to use the analog output to pirate HD discs.

 

[Tom.W]

Hi
There are 5bnc into port 4/5. I changed the transcoder to manual and things were much worse. The picture was way off screen to the left and the scrolling lines more active. Turning the screws for H-delay, H-width and V-width could not correct things, the V-width had no effect whatsoever (incidentally, I have no idea what these terms mean). I changed the unit back to auto and the scrolling lines were no more. Odd. The RGB dashes at the top of the screen on sDVD were now gone also. However, the white dashes at the top of the screen (off the picture) were still present, being a different pattern for HD and sDVD and the picture was off the screen both sides. Could this be a barco issue?
We watched the HD movie 300 last night set to 720p (it's the only one I have at present) and was not particularly impressed with the pq, there seemed to be a 'shimmering' quality to it. My son termed it 'flickering'. Today, I played the R1 standard side of the disc in the HTPC and to me it looked no worse than the HD. I was expecting to be blown away by HD but so far am questioning my purchasing decisions. I expected to plug the transcoder in line and everything would be hunky dory. Wish I had a spare £3 1/2K for a 1080p pj!

Have you contacted Kim ? No problem here with the transcoder or HD with the BD-808 or the 1209s . HD looks great ! Sounds like a sync problem or perhaps a defective transcoder .

 

[terrythecat]

Hi Tom, no I haven't yet but looks like I may have to. When you say sync
problem or faulty transcoder do you mean the sync problem could be elsewhere
other than the transcoder? Cheers.

 

[Tom.W]

Can you use blanking to remove the noise at the top of the image ? What are your jumper settings and have you eliminated the possibility of a defective cable . To clear things up what exactly is the current problem as you said the scrolling lines were now gone if I'm reading this correctly . You also might want to read this thread on the transcoder .

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2511&highlight=kimcoder

The banding issue sounds like a possible ground loop problem .



.

 

[beun]

Terry,

I think I know what the problem is with the white dots at the top of the screen, to be sure would it be possible for you to send me a photo of the top of the screen for example of the 300 movie?

What I think you are seeing are some of the off picture lines (unfortunately video sources don't all have the same picture height) and the solution would be to stretch your picture vertically just a bit.

I am not quite sure if your scrolling lines have now disappeared or not but if they are still there there may indeed be a grounding issue. You can try to rotate the power supply 180deg in the power outlet and see if that makes a difference. If all fails I will send you a new transcoder to check if that is the problem.

The photo you can send to [email protected]


Kim

 

[terrythecat]

Hi Kim
Good of you to get in touch - I was going to drop you a line direct but have been busy the last few days.

To date.... I watched a standard DVD on sunday and throughout there was a mauve line scrolling slowly, some times upwards and then downwards and occasionally remaining stationary?
I have just used the Video Essentials disc to set audio levels and this scrolling
was just going crazy giving the whole picture the 'shimmering' quality I mentioned earlier and the brightness seems to change in intensity, something my son remarked on when we watched 300 - and the weirdest thing - in the ski scene at the beginning of the disc (whilst paused) there are two girls one of whom is wearing a blue jacket, this changes from blue through mauve, to green, then back to blue?? I'm getting more confused by the day as things don't appear to be constant day by day, disc to disc. The film I watched on sunday seemed OK to me in all respects except for the mauve line and a number of white dashes above the screen. Yet other DVD's have also displayed the RGB dashes which fade and then return. The white dashes above the HD movie are of a different pattern to that of standard DVD's.

I'm now assuming I may have to learn how to tweak the Barco in order to deal
with these off the screen issues.

I have rotated the plug as suggested to no avail and will try and get some decent screenshots later - no luck thus far with the camera I have.

regards for now

Terry

 

[Tom.W]

Terry , Read this on ground loops ...

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/index.html

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/video_isolation.html

 

[terrythecat]

OK. First things first. Anybody reading this who has the Video Essentials disc
please erase my previous comments re: my observations using this disc from
their memory....I had the sound off at that particular time and now I realise
that was suppose to happen.Doh.

Thanks for that link Tom, I read a little and then thought I'd try something. My main hi-fi is plugged into a multiway fed from a power conditioner. The RTC2200was plugged into a normal socket which I then tried in the multiway and the scrolling seems to have stopped when viewing a few clips of standard DVD. Good news so far eh Kim. However, the HD 300 still showed signs of rapid scrolling and until I receive some more HD's I have nothing to use as a yardstick.
I am amazed that grounding problems can have such an effect on video if this
is indeed the case....I have no hum or buzzing with the hi-fi.

The Barco was set up by Roland Brooks with the HTPC as source....if adjustments are made to accommodate the Toshiba will this have a negative
effect on the set up of the PC?

We are watching a film tonight so I will see how things are over the duration it.

Thanks for everyone's responses.

 

[beun]

Terry,

I will be preparing a new one for you so I can ship it out when needed. This is still kinda weird and I am not quite sure what is wrong, the transcoder, the projector or the interaction. What you may try is to widen the H-sync since the problem primarily seems to occur in HD. To do that, you have to open the case and move jumper JP5 to position JP6, if desired you can now also rotate the H-width and H-delay potmeters in the back to adjust the picture.

In any case, when you think you have had enough with trying to make this work I will ship you the new one.


Kim

 

[terrythecat]

The attached photos aren't very good but you can see the lines off the screen area. Photo 1 is the HD and you can see that it differs from the next on SD. Photo 3 shows the additional RGB dashes which appear then fade over a number of seconds and are then absent on photo 4. I understand that these may be alleviated by tweaking the Barco for which I have downloaded a user's manual.

The scrolling lines now seem to be eliminated since moving the power module for the transcoder to another outlet....watching a movie last night the picture looked ok other than the lines above and the picture being off the screen each side by a few inches, although this movie didn't contain the sort of material that would show up what to me is the primary issue and what the movie 300 has in abundance, namely large areas of pale shades. We have just looked at a scene from a disc, in play and in pause mode, containing a predominately light grey background and this clearly showed the 'shimmering' that I refered to earlier. I don't know if this is what is termed video noise by those in the industry.... I can only describe it in layman's terms and my son called it 'flickering', another term I might use would be 'unstable'. The same scene using the PC via the RGB passthrough displayed a 'stable' image. I changed jumper 5 to 6 and this had no effect other than to move the picture left or right by small amounts, with H-width seemingly doing the same as H-delay but to a smaller degree.

Obviously, I don't want you going to the trouble and expense of shipping another transcoder if the problem lies elsewhere....the component cable is brand new from Ixos and the XE-1 was fine used initially into a TV in the living room, and other than try to explain what is occuring at present I am at a loss as to what to do next.

Terry

PS. I have also sent this direct to your email Kim.

 

[Tom.W]

You should use blanking on your projector to get rid of those lines .

 

[beun]

Terry,

The lines above and below the image are caused by the projector and I agree with Tom that you should use the blanking of the projector to get rid of them. With regards to the shimmering you mention I am at a loss to explain it. I will therefor ship you a new transcoder in the next few days anyway just to be sure that that does not explain it.


Kim

 

[terrythecat]

Thanks Tom....I will consult the Barco manual on blanking.

Thanks Kim....I hope I'm not wasting your time.

Terry

 

[terrythecat]

To all interested parties - the replacement transcoder has arrived and works fine
straight out of the box....back on track!

Terry

 

[wilders]

Terry, I have similar kit to you, was wondering what you think now your transcoder is sorted.....the shimmering gone now?
Can you compare SD & HD directly?
Is the bang for buck worth it? A nice review would be good!!!!

 

[terrythecat]

Hi Wilders

Yeah....the shimmering's gone, the picture is now as stable as that from my HTPC which I want to get away from. The transcoder was replaced speedily and without fuss and now does what it says on the tin (sic). I bought the XE-1 to use as a replacement for the PC and at less than £304 I think is excellent value. The pq seems, to my eyes at least, of SD at 576p is as good as 768p from the PC if not slightly better, although I am peeved at the output being downrezed to 576p through component. The on-board sound decoding of the XE-1 is a big plus factor as far as I'm concerned....no need to lust after a new surround amp. Incidentally, I got the transcoder so my son can also use his 360 through the pj.

I've just acquired the HD-Fury so that I can enjoy SD at 720p but I've had to turn to the forum regarding the installation of that device.

My exposure to HD is rather limited at the moment....being the proud owner of just 1 (300)....I'm still waiting for my 2 freebies from Toshiba. It's not my intention to buy lot's of HD's, maybe just the odd classic. I may join a postal
rental outfit if they have a good selection of HD's.

Terry

 

[Tom.W]

Glad to hear it worked out Terry ! The transcoder is very good in my opinion